WE now have the 100th British soldier killed in Iraq since Blair and his Foreign Secretary Jack Straw started our involvement in this ridiculous war.

Just how much longer is Straw going to continue backing this war monger?

Particularly when it must be accepted that these Muslims obviously don't want democracy.

For the bereaved families the cost of Blair's idiocy is obvious. But what about the rest of us? This war has cost well over a billion pounds of taxpayers' money so much so that Alzheimer's sufferers are no longer to receive the drugs that fight the disease in its early stages and women with breast cancer cannot get Herceptin as a matter of course.

On top of this, Blair has given £1.9 billion back to the EU in Brussels so that Poland can have an improved metro system.

When are Blair and Straw going to put British people first?

Surely Straw can't back Blair's statement that troops will be withdrawn from Iraq "when the Iraqi government says it no longer needs them."

Having our troops under the control of the Americans is bad enough, without the Iraqis telling us what to do.

R PICKUP, Pinewood, Blackburn.